


i'm not broken (but you can see the cracks)

by guiltyhearts



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Destiny Islands (Kingdom Hearts), Freeform, Gen, KH2 - Freeform, Kairi-centric (Kingdom Hearts), POV Kairi (Kingdom Hearts), kairi does a lot of waiting, post-kh1, some sokai here and there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:19:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26718136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guiltyhearts/pseuds/guiltyhearts
Summary: Waiting was all she did... all she ever did. |Kairi is home, safe and sound. What else can she do now but wait for her friends to return?
Relationships: Kairi/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 3





	i'm not broken (but you can see the cracks)

Waiting was all she could do.

Not as though there was a choice in the matter. Destiny Islands seemed to beckon her back into its new, old state. It pulled her from his grip. How she wished she could have pulled him to her and brought him back home with her. But there was still their dear friend, trapped somewhere deep in the unknown because he wanted to be the hero. He promised he would come back, not alone, and she believed him. She had to. Some days she curled her fingers into her palms and she could almost feel the phantoms of his hands, gripping onto hers for dear life, willing himself not to let go.

* * *

Waiting was all she could do.

Kairi wasn’t alone, per se. It was not as though she didn’t have other friends she could spend time with. But she could never tell them the full extent of what happened. What she missed in the time she was out of herself. What she had seen through his eyes, what she saw with her own eyes. People observed out loud how quiet she had suddenly become. How careful and reserved she was now. Missing her old friends, no doubt.

And yes, there was no doubt she missed her best friends. The days passed by too slowly, too quietly, too dimly, without them. But more than anything, she worried. She worried about Riku who, without his friends to pull him out of the dark, was twisted and manipulated into believing the worst of them, the worst of himself. How utterly alone he must be now. She worried about Sora. How he always wanted to help. How freely he ran towards adventure, and how he would put himself in danger as a result. He was always so friendly; what if some evil force took advantage of that, just like with Riku?

* * *

Waiting was all she could do.

Some nights Kairi could sleep undisturbed. But the morning after, she would wake up feeling guilty. How could she sleep in her comfortable room, her family only down the hall safe and sound, when Sora and Riku were light years or dimensions away, possibly in some unsafe area, unable to sleep without keeping one eye open? They deserved to be home, in their own bedrooms without the weight of the worlds on their shoulders. 

Some nights she couldn’t sleep at all. It was especially bad on rainy nights, when heavy clouds loomed overhead and flashed with thunderous malevolence. Even though she knew these clouds would not open to swallow them whole into an abyss, sleep would not come to her.

In those nights, she couldn’t be in her bedroom. She would go down to the living room, turn on the lights, and sit in silence. Eventually, she started taking down papers and pens. She would write until her hand cramped, and then she would write again. She would write until her eyes watered and felt heavy with exhaustion. She wrote about everything and nothing at once.

Some nights she could sleep, disturbed by dreams. She dreamt of dark alleyways, of misshapen buildings with planks of wood hammered haphazardly over patches of walls. She dreamt of flying tables and chairs that could only be struck down with the magic pulsing through her hands. She dreamt of talking doorknobs and grinning cats. She dreamt of leaping through tall trees and thick vines. She dreamt of a stadium where, to the roar of thunderous applause, monsters of all forms were fought. She dreamt of kind souls that offered help in spades even as they were in desperate need too. She dreamt of flying on an elephant, flying on a magic carpet, and finally flying through the air on her own.

She dreamt of him.

After those dreams she always woke up, softly calling out his name. It weighed on her tongue and rolled out as sweetly as a distant memory of shared sweets, shared laughs, shared dreams. 

* * *

Waiting was all she could do.

The first time she entered the cave with the secret door, she wanted to know if the world’s keyhole had indeed been sealed for good and that their home was safe. That she was able to recognize and understand this, she chalked it up to newly-discovered powers, just as she could recognize before that darkness had invaded the islands, and just as she could see her friend in a monster.

Kairi had been so caught up with the addition to hers and Sora’s childhood portraits and its possible implications that she barely registered that the visit had left her with a fleeting sense of disappointment.

It was only in one of those late nights when all she could do was write that it emerged once more. She heard about the concept of stream of consciousness, of simply writing down thoughts as they occurred, and she wanted to try it for herself. In hindsight, her writing made little sense, but the catharsis it brought at the time was a balm.

_It isn’t fair that it’s Sora’s hands on the wheel of the ship instead of mine. It isn’t fair that he and Riku could leave and go back and forth to different worlds while I’m here. I know what’s out there now. Why can’t I see it too? Why can’t I help them?_

She had to stop at that moment. She _had_ been disappointed that the secret door was sealed. It meant that there was nothing for her to do but wait. What does one do in peacetime, when there is a greater threat in a distant world, and your dearest friends are caught in the middle of a fight they hadn’t signed up for? What could she do here in a world that was now removed from that greater fight? No one else seemed to know or care that the world was far greater than their archipelago of islands except for her. 

Sora did the right thing in restoring their home and sealing the world’s keyhole so that she and everyone else could be safe. He was doing the right thing in looking for Riku. In her heart, she knew he would make good on his promise to return. 

But deep down, she wished she wasn’t here. After all, hadn’t she wanted to leave the islands too? No one could have anticipated the danger the friends would find themselves in, or how they would step up to face it. But wouldn’t she fight too, even if she didn’t know how or with what weapon? Could she fight like Sora and Riku did? The answer, she admitted bitterly, was no. She didn’t have the magic weapon bestowed onto Sora or the know-how to fight with it, even from play. She might have held him back...

In the meantime, all she could do was wait.

* * *

Waiting was all she did. But for what? For whom?

Inexplicably, there was a faceless, nameless boy in her memory. The thought of whom made her heart ache. It ached with fear, with longing, with an unconditional sort of love that was incomprehensible, but not misplaced. She desperately wanted to know if he was okay. 

Kairi's days passed without incident, but she was still plagued with the thought of someone she didn't know and couldn't name that gripped her heart and brought tears to her eyes.

On one sleepless night, she took her restless self up to the rooftop of her home to gaze at the stars. Did they twinkle, shine, and pulsate with movement because she thought she saw them do so, she willed it as such, or was it because that was what stars did? 

Did the other boy see the same sky that she did? ...Was he thinking of her too?

The next night, she didn't return to the rooftop. Instead, she took her pen to paper and wrote a letter to him. As she wrote, the tightness in her chest and throat eased, giving way to a calmness, a release of tension she hadn't realized she held in her until that moment. While she was no closer to remembering the recipient of her letter, she felt she could rest easy tonight. She would send this out the next day.

* * *

Waiting was all she did… Waiting was all she ever did… 

Sora. She believed wholeheartedly that someday he would wind up on the shores of the island with Riku by his side. Then they would be home, safe at last. Kairi need only wait; she could be patient for a little longer. 

And yet... There was an almost imperceptible force, a voice, within her. It coursed through her veins and down her fingers, a silent reminder that there was more. _She_ was more. It urged her to think again of what was beyond the shores of their islands. All this left her quietly uneasy with the peace of her day-to-day life. 

Kairi stood alone by the shore as she looked at the play island across the sea. She saw boats sail forward to the mainland, carrying children whose appetite for play and adventure had been sated. 

The sun was setting, casting the pristine blue sky into a softer orange that enveloped her surroundings. Under this twilight sky, the sea shimmered invitingly as the waves ebbed under her feet. 

Kairi turned her gaze once more to the island. She thought she could make out three figures aboard a large raft as they left the island, carried out by the wind and the waves.

“Maybe… waiting isn’t good enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing fanfiction on and off for years, but somehow I've rarely, if ever, written from Kairi's POV. This was as much a writing exercise for me to write from her POV as it was to explore what she might have felt following the events of KH1, up to the midpoint in KH2. There's a shift in her character in the games, as she becomes more reserved without her best friends around. That's why I took a more introspective approach to this. However patient Kairi is in the games, I wanted to explore the loneliness and possible bitterness she felt at having to stay back at Destiny Islands while Sora went to look for Riku.
> 
> If you've made it this far, thank you for reading!


End file.
